Review/Film;
'Prince of Tides' Sidesteps Book's Pitfalls

By JANET MASLIN

Published: December 25, 1991

Nothing about Barbra Streisand's previous acting or direction is preparation for her expert handling of "The Prince of Tides," which has been pared down from Pat Conroy's sprawling, hyperbolic novel to a film that is gratifyingly lean. Discretion and reserve are not the first qualities that come to mind about Ms. Streisand's work, yet they are very much in evidence this time. So is the frankly emotional style with which she is more often associated, a style perfectly attuned to this film's complex, stirring story. "The Prince of Tides" marks Ms. Streisand's triumphantly good job of locating that story's salient elements and making them come alive on the screen.

Everything about Mr. Conroy's overripe family saga is suffused with excess, from the author's descriptions of his characters ("The words of her poems were a most private and fragrant orchard," he writes of Savannah Wingo, the narrator Tom Wingo's twin sister) to the experiences those characters share. The three Wingo children, Luke, Savannah and Tom, seem to do everything in unison, often on what are either the very best or very worst days of their lives. Feisty, brave and endlessly self-dramatizing, they have the knack of being colorful to a fault.

Their mother, Lila, who raised them idyllically on a South Carolina sea island, was both the most soothing and the most treacherous parent in the world. The island itself was Paradise, then Paradise Lost. Their abusive father, Henry, cast a giant shadow over his children's lives. All of the Wingos' personal dramas are played out on this exhaustingly grand scale.

"The Prince of Tides" centers on the adult Tom's efforts to overcome the effects of his painful childhood and come to terms with the various women in his life. These are Lila (Kate Nelligan), now a brittle, wealthy matron; Sallie (Blythe Danner), the wife experiencing the full brunt of Tom's unhappiness; Savannah (Melinda Dillon), now a suicidally depressed New Yorker, and Dr. Susan Lowenstein (Ms. Streisand), Savannah's psychiatrist, who enlists Tom's help in treating Savannah and winds up getting to the heart of Tom's troubles, too.

One of the best things Ms. Streisand has done here is to get out of the way, so her portrayal of Dr. Lowenstein never upstages Nick Nolte's superlative Tom. "The Prince of Tides" must be Tom's story if it is to have any center, and so Ms. Streisand mostly confines herself to the role of a clever, attractive, authoritative figure on the sidelines. Later on, when Tom and the doctor do become romantically involved, the film takes on a few gooey overtones, what with a too-picturesque weekend in the country, a roaring fire and so on. But by and large it does a remarkable job of maintaining its intelligence and dignity.

As envisioned by Mr. Conroy, Dr. Lowenstein's attempts to treat Tom have a coy, flirtatious ring and do a lot to undermine her professionalism. Ms. Streisand's smarter, more composed version of this character is only one of her film's notable improvements upon the novel. The screenplay, by Mr. Conroy and Becky Johnston, consistently extracts the book's best lines of dialogue and leaves the rest behind. The book may have the feel of an overwrought, melodramatic movie, but the film itself does not.

Long, tedious anecdotes about the Wingos' colorful exploits have been compressed into brief snippets from home movies or else simply removed. (Happily, the pet tiger that plays a role in Mr. Conroy's most traumatic episode is just about gone.) The novel's big revelations have been given different weight here, and in the film's version they make more sense. Ms. Streisand makes some especially skillful transitions in juxtaposing Tom's present and past for the audience, just as they are connected in the character's own mind.

A lot of attention has gone into keeping up both stars' appearances, and their sleek good looks give the film a romantic spirit it might otherwise lack. Ms. Streisand looks quietly, unobtrusively elegant, as do the sets representing her home and office. And Mr. Nolte comes atypically close to matinee idol status with this role. The fact that his hair has never looked quite so blond or so glossy should not detract from the fire, urgency and flawless timing that shape his performance. Mr. Nolte is every bit as good while engaging in wrenching therapeutic sessions with Dr. Lowenstein as he is in declaring in a restaurant: "God, there's nothin' sexier than a beautiful woman orderin' food in French. Now I want you to read me the whole menu."

"The Prince of Tides" has been particularly well cast, with several strongly appealing actresses in minor roles. Ms. Dillon has little to do but look traumatized; however, Ms. Danner and especially Ms. Nelligan add substantially to the film's vivid sense of Tom's life. Jeroen Krabbe plays the story's least plausible character, the world-famous violinist unhappily married to Dr. Lowenstein, and still manages to give the role some panache. Notably good also is Jason Gould, who plays Ms. Streisand's son and very obviously
is
her son, in both appearance and manner. Mr. Gould makes this unhappy teen-ager a worthwhile part of the film's overall equation instead of the fifth wheel he easily could have been.

Contributing to the lavish tone of "The Prince of Tides" are James Newton Howard's swelling score and Stephen Goldblatt's cinematography, which visually captures the long-lost glow of childhood implicit in the story.